“Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3:16-18 NIV
In the third chapter of Daniel, The account moves from Daniel for a moment and focuses on his 3 friends, Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego. Leading up to the verses for today, King Nebuchadnezzar had ordered that every person from every land would bow before a golden statue that he had his workers make when they heard music. The music was their signal that it was time to bow to the statue in obedience to the king. If anyone did not bow to the statue then the punishment would be death by being thrown into the fiery furnace that was used to melt metal and bake the bricks to build buildings.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had not bowed when the music was played and one of the other individuals had informed King Nebuchadnezzar that he had 3 people in his court that were not obeying his order. King Nebuchadnezzar has the 3 men brought to him and questions them. This is where they make a hard choice and glorify to God. The king gives them one more chance to bow to his statue and obey his order.
In the verses for today, we see their answer to King Nebuchadnezzar when he asks them one last time if they will bow to the statue. The reply that they are not defending themselves and that they are not bowing to any statue, that they only worship God. They knew this meant death by burning alive in a furnace that was extremely hot.
They placed their trust and very lives in the hands of God, they showed how much they trusted God and how much faith they had in God to deliver them. They even said that if God chose not to deliver them, then they still would not bow to the king’s statue. They made the hard choice to follow God when it wasn’t convenient for them, their lives were on the line.
They could have bowed to the statue and then given a number of excuses as to why they did and how it was ok for them to do that. They could have said that they were only doing it this once so the King would stop harassing them about it or they could have said that they did it but didn’t mean any part of it. The problem with that is that once they did it, they would not have been able to undo it. Once they bowed to the statue, they were in. It was going to become harder to not do it the next time and what was the next excuse that they would use?
If they had chosen to bow, they would have been discredited as followers of God, their God, the God who had been faithful to them, protected them and who they had followed for all of their lives. God would have known that they obeyed the king and showed others that they had no trust or faith in God. They were in a tough situation and then chose to do the right thing and the hard thing.
Have you ever made a hard choice like this? One where you were going to lose something or someone if you chose God instead of what the other person wanted you to do. What did you do? Did you choose the other person or did you choose God? I pray you chose God.